Content marketing should be a familiar concept to most marketers these days. Nearly 90 percent of B2B marketers currently employ a content marketing strategy because they believe it is an effective mechanism for building a brand’s reputation, increasing brand awareness, driving new leads, and ultimately boosting your sales. In fact, content marketing has become so MORE…

Getting started shouldn't be daunting. Generally, you'll know right away whether you like a user interface (UI) or not, and most of the contenders we reviewed offer free trials so you can poke around before dropping any cash. Luckily, most of these services have modern-looking graphics and uncluttered layouts. These are not the complex business software UIs of yesterday. Be careful, though, as some free trials require a credit card. This means you need to be sure to cancel your trial before you're billed if you're not happy with the service.

Using Dr Dave Chaffey's approach, the digital marketing planning (DMP) has three main stages: Opportunity, Strategy and Action. He suggests that any business looking to implement a successful digital marketing strategy must structure their plan by looking at opportunity, strategy and action. This generic strategic approach often has phases of situation review, goal setting, strategy formulation, resource allocation and monitoring.[60]
Personalization in email marketing is essential because most people want a more relevant experience. Email personalization is not just about using people’s names in an email. It’s also about making sure you send the right emails to the right people at the right time. One essential tool for email personalization is segmentation. You can get an email marketing expert to help you set up segments so you can personalize appropriately. Done right, email personalization results in more clicks and more business.

According to Chaffey, more and more people are researching the term “digital marketing” as companies attempt to make the transition from traditional marketing efforts to digital. Chaffey defines “digital marketing” as “achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies.” The decision whether or not to invest in digital marketing, however, should be determined by the results you, or your company, experience from your campaigns, not your company’s adoption of the technology that now gives you the means to utilize digital marketing.

List fatigue is also a concern. If you're buying a list from a trade show, keep in mind that the other vendors at the trade show, and even businesses elsewhere who bought the list, are also emailing these recipients. By the time you reach the recipients’ inboxes, those readers are going to be exhausted by the barrage of unsolicited commercial email they've been receiving.
There are many vendors out there who sell lists or rent them (though renting means that the list seller maintains ownership and control of the email list). These are collections of email addresses that the vendors sell to any business or individual who can pay the fees. Your email list is considered to be a purchased or shared list if it’s provided to you by a third party, like an email list vendor or affiliate. There's a few ways that vendors build these non opt-in email lists.
Email marketing - Email marketing in comparison to other forms of digital marketing is considered cheap; it is also a way to rapidly communicate a message such as their value proposition to existing or potential customers. Yet this channel of communication may be perceived by recipients to be bothersome and irritating especially to new or potential customers, therefore the success of email marketing is reliant on the language and visual appeal applied. In terms of visual appeal, there are indications that using graphics/visuals that are relevant to the message which is attempting to be sent, yet less visual graphics to be applied with initial emails are more effective in-turn creating a relatively personal feel to the email. In terms of language, the style is the main factor in determining how captivating the email is. Using casual tone invokes a warmer and gentle and inviting feel to the email in comparison to a formal style. For combinations; it's suggested that to maximize effectiveness; using no graphics/visual alongside casual language. In contrast using no visual appeal and a formal language style is seen as the least effective method.[48] https://blog.capterra.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/email-templates-720x360.png
Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer's action with a company. To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communications' primary purpose must be "to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender" along with a few other narrow definitions of transactional messaging.[2] Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status emails, reorder emails, and email receipts.
You don’t even have to think you’re a spammer to feel bad. Many of us feel bad just for sending too many emails. Often solopreneurs are downright terrified of sending an email update to their subscribers. They say they don’t know what to say, but I think it’s that they’re afraid, somehow, that they’re bothering their subscribers. They aren’t sure they deserve to be in their inboxes, even if those same people signed up for their emails (through a double opt-in process, of course).
Thank you for this great roundup of tips regarding marketing emails. I especially appreciate your mention of tracking emails so you can continually improve your strategies, including an above the fold call to action so customers know exactly what to do next, and most of all making sure you have a solid (not necessarily huge) email list. Reaching out to those you know may be interested in your company and what it has to offer is always going to garner you the best results. I would also love to add that focusing on the customer, proofreading your email, and making the email conversational are other excellent tips for making your sales emails stand out and actually get read. Thanks again for sharing!
Presentation is everything, or so they say. With this old adage in mind, we’ve compiled our best tips for anyone who wants to send emails that subscribers click into a handy email design guide. We cover each facet of design: content, templates, identity, color, images, layout, fonts, and calls to action. Design is as much science as it is art, and we take the guesswork out of what can seem like the most challenging part of sending good emails.
Once your list is targeted, you need to spend an equally large portion of time coming up with a great deal – even if it means you might lose a bit of money on it. The underlying goal of any marketing campaign is to gain new customers, and it’s worth it to significantly reduce your profit margins to gain said customers. Once you have a surgically-honed list and an amazing offer, then you can spend some time on the design, copy, delivery methods, postage rates, date of delivery, size of the mailer…there are a lot of other options to consider, but following the 40/40/20 rule you can see how important audience and offer truly are.

Much of this increase can be attributed to the ability to couple physical mail pieces with mobile and online marketing efforts, resulting in a sound multichannel marketing program. Think of how many pieces of mail you've seen recently sporting QR codes, URLs to social media sites, and SMS short codes. Mail affords marketers greater reach, allows more information to be communicated than most online advertising efforts, and gives buyers the opportunity to respond to a call to action in the way that they want, on their own time.

Build your audience and manage your contact groups. Install our opt-in widget on your website to capture email addresses and automatically sync to contact lists in your account. Upload your own contact lists as either a CSV, TXT or XLS files. Our system will seamlessly integrate into your CRM acting as your second pair of eyes, filtering out unsubscribes and possible errors.

When you send messages to a purchased email list, you don’t have explicit opt-in to be emailing those subscribers. Explicit opt-in — meaning subscribers actively and knowingly gave you permission to email them (i.e. filling out a sign up form on your website) — is required for a quality list, says AWeber’s Best Practices Manager, Josh Smith. “If you don’t have explicit opt-in, you are bound to have problems,” he explains.

There are several web-based programs which send out email blasts and which also help the user to remain in conformity to anti-spam laws. The best and most versatile service is Aweber. It charges a flat rate of under $20 per month and everything is unlimited. For smaller email lists, MailChimp is excellent and one can use it for free if there are fewer than 2000 subscribers on the email list, and one only needs to send out a few blasts each month.

Nathan, it’s a great write up,no doubt about that.But I would be more willing to learn or see your progresssion from none to an established brand. For example, you said you had worked with affiliates. But it’s not easy for a new brand to work with top affiliates. So what you did to build relationships with them? Lastly, time frame and monetary costs can be discussed as well 🙂

Most popular email marketing services offer functionality that strikes a recipient from a list once a certain number of emails to a specific recipient ‘bounced’ back as undeliverable. Don’t be overeager to remove a subscriber, though; there are valid reasons why an email cannot be delivered. Consider only removing such a subscriber after four or five “bounces”.
Electronic mailing list servers may be set to forward messages to subscribers of a particular mailing list either individually as they are received by the list server, or in digest form in which all messages received on a particular day by the list server are combined into one email that is sent once per day to subscribers. Some mailing lists allow individual subscribers to decide how they prefer to receive messages from the list server (individual or digest).[2]
Just one subscriber and something to say, that’s it! Don’t wait to have a “large list”. Email Marketing has no limits in size, BIG or small. When it comes to using a tool like Benchmark, the last thing you want is to have to learn something new. That’s why Benchmark Email was created with familiar tools in mind. Here is how and what you will need to get started
Build your audience and manage your contact groups. Install our opt-in widget on your website to capture email addresses and automatically sync to contact lists in your account. Upload your own contact lists as either a CSV, TXT or XLS files. Our system will seamlessly integrate into your CRM acting as your second pair of eyes, filtering out unsubscribes and possible errors.
Not only was this initial email great, but his response to my answers was even better: Within a few days of responding to the questionnaire, I received a long and detailed personal email from Matt thanking me for filling out the questionnaire and offering a ton of helpful advice and links to resources specifically catered to my answers. I was very impressed by his business acumen, communication skills, and obvious dedication to his readers.
This is not a recommended email marketing practice any more. The most successful email marketers segment their lists. The cutting-edge marketers are using things like dynamic content to take personalization even further. But even beginner email marketers can add a subscriber’s name to subject lines. Even that has been shown to give a nice lift when used appropriately.
Digital marketing is also referred to as 'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'. The term digital marketing has grown in popularity over time. In the USA online marketing is still a popular term. In Italy, digital marketing is referred to as web marketing. Worldwide digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.[19]
The books I've written have actually had three different titles, updated to move with the times. My first text book was titled: Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. I then created E-business E-commerce Management and, with PR Smith, E-marketing Excellence, for professionals a couple of years later. Then, much later, the names switched and in 2012 we renamed the Internet Marketing book to Digital Marketing with the others becoming Digital Business and Digital Marketing Excellence. About time too, since I was involved in developing the syllabus as an examiner for the first IDM Diploma in Digital Marketing back in 2004-5 when the term was hardly used at all - so it's been great to see 'Digital Marketing' adopted as the 'de facto' term, when I was first involved in defining it with the IDM students in 2004!
In the 2000s, with more and more Internet users and the birth of iPhone, customers started searching products and making decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing department of a company. In addition, a survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.[12]These problems made marketers find the digital ways for market development.
Due to the massive growth of the Internet, most countries have passed legislation to prevent companies from sending unsolicited emails. These laws determine what is and what is not considered acceptable email correspondence, and enforce restrictions on email communications. In the United States and Europe, for example, bulk email must contain an accurate from field and subject line, and the email content must include the sender’s physical address. In addition, a blast email must also offer its recipients the opportunity to unsubscribe from the email list — and such requests must be met within a specified period of time. As a result of these laws, it is very important for companies to maintain an updated list of subscriptions and cancellations at all times, and avoid sending out email that appears to be spam.
To have success with your email blast marketing, it requires much more than putting some content together and sending it to a bunch of people. You need to have the right content and it needs to be sent to the right group of potential consumers. In addition to that, you also need to include the right elements in the newsletters to increase the chances of action on the part of the reader. With a little bit of effort and a thoughtful approach, just about any business can manage an effective eblast campaign.
To do this, you need to have a web analytics tool (like Google Analytics) installed on your site. If you do, and you’ve enabled our Google Analytics integration, then you’ll be able to see details of any visits to your website from your email campaigns, including how long they spent on your site, what pages they visited, what campaigns they’re coming from and more.
The best email marketing platforms depend on your budget and desired features. Here are some to consider. MailChimp is free for up to 2000 subscribers, so it’s a popular platform to start with. Alternatives to MailChimp include Constant Contact and Aweber. If you need to include other marketing tasks, try Hubspot or Infusionsoft, which many larger businesses use. Whichever you choose, you can easily hire someone to help you set up your email marketing account and create an email newsletter template.
Just like with any other form of advertising, you will need to hit people with your message more than once in order to maximize effectiveness. Your first send might pique their interest, but people are receiving mail at the same time they are getting home, and are facing many distractions. By consistently sending marketing messages, you increase the chance that they will convert.
“Most direct mail pieces deserve the moniker of “junk mail.” To make sure yours stands out from the crowd, you must deliver some kind of real value that transcends your brand message. There are so many creative things you can do that are cheap: Deliver curated content, use creative techniques (such as punch-outs or folds) to make something that consumers can use or write witty copy. Be boldly creative!” ~ Brittany Hodak, ZinePak
Did you know there are organizations dedicated to combating email spam? Thank goodness, right? They set up a little thing called a honeypot, which is a planted email address that, when harvested and emailed, identifies the sender as a spammer. Similarly, things called spam traps can be created to identify spammy activity; they're set up when an email address yields a hard bounce because it's old or no longer valid, but still receives consistent traffic. Fishy, eh?
Use custom campaign URLs. Google provides a tool where you can create your own unique URL for your particular marketing campaigns. You may include parameters such as your medium, source, content, term, and campaign name. As soon as you have a customized link, you may use it in its complete form or shorten it by using a link shortening tool such as bit.ly.
A mailing list archive is a collection of past messages from one or more electronic mailing lists. Such archives often include searching and indexing functionality. Many archives are directly associated with the mailing list, but some organizations, such as Gmane, collect archives from multiple mailing lists hosted at different organizations; thus, one message sent to one popular mailing list may end up in many different archives. Gmane had over 9,000 mailing list archives as of 16 January 2007. Some popular free software programs for collecting mailing list archives are Hypermail, MHonArc, and FUDforum.
E-marketing refers to the use of the Internet and digital media capabilities to help sell your products or services. These digital technologies are a valuable addition to traditional marketing approaches regardless of the size and type of your business. E-marketing is also referred to as Internet marketing (i-marketing), online marketing or web-marketing.
If you sign up for something and the terms include words like "Sign up to receive updates from us and our partners that we think you'll like," your email address is likely being collected for a shared or sold list. A subset of this method is called co-registration. This is where you sign up at a website, but that website also automatically, or nearly automatically, signs you up for other sites. They try to legitimize this by informing you of the additional subscriptions, or providing boxes to uncheck. This is a situation where it's not the subscriber’s intention to sign up for the material they will be receiving.
Email marketing is now a very popular offshoot of direct mail marketing (See also Email Marketing). However, it’s worth bearing in mind that 37 states now have laws regarding “spam,” or unwanted junk email. Therefore, companies that wish to maintain a positive reputation use an “opt-in” policy for marketing email, targeting only interested customers.
If you already have a pretty large database, you also likely have some contacts that have gone quite stale. If so, I recommend running a re-engagement campaign that can help you both scrub your list and prevent the kind of spam and IP issues I addressed earlier, as well as reawaken old contacts that might have forgotten about you, but would actually be great fits for sales.

Neil O’Keefe, senior vice president of marketing and content at the Data & Marketing Association, says that marketers began questioning direct mail’s endurance in 2007. That year, Statista reports that smartphone sales jumped 70% from the previous year to $8.7 billion. At the same time, the volume of mail sent through the U.S. Postal Service began to plummet: In 2006, people in the U.S. sent 213.1 billion pieces of mail, according to USPS; by 2017, they were sending 149.5 billion pieces each year, a 29.9% decline. By this point, smartphone sales had reached $55.6 billion. The price of postage and paper had skyrocketed, as did the number of internet users—everything seemed to hammer a nail into direct mail’s coffin.

You just rock with this post Jonathan. Really a great and wonderful article with great list building ideas. As a digital marketing guy I also found that e-mail marketing works better than any other digital marketing tool. Because subscription list gives a chance to convert more leads with a little effort. Thanks again for this informative article bro, It will help many newbies to learn Effective List Building Techniques. Jitender Sharma
The term originated in the early days of email marketing when sending a mass mailing (read: blasting) was a new idea that contrasted with the more familiar way of using email as two-way correspondence. At the time, the internet was a lawless wasteland didn’t have many regulations, so once the wrong person got ahold of your email address, they could and would spam you with whatever they pleased. It was completely free advertising!
Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which gives companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of transactional emails. There are also software vendors that offer specialized transactional email marketing services, which include providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and running specific marketing campaigns (such as customer referral programs).[citation needed]
As Ximena Cordon points out in her article “What is the Difference Between Digital and Online Marketing” on WhiteSharkMedia.com, “digital marketing” does not necessarily mean the internet; it can simply mean utilizing technology to build your marketing message. Technologies such as e-books, SMS texts, games and TV ads can be defined as digital marketing; however, so can online videos and e-mails. So long as a form of digital technology or digital media is utilized in spreading your marketing message, you have engaged in digital marketing.
As a growing business, you may also be looking for a CRM solution, and you'll find that the more advanced email marketing services have begun to crossover into CRM. It makes sense: Both types of software deal with managing and communicating with customers. A handful of these services are one-stop shops, either offering both email marketing and CRM out of the box or as add-on services.

The curriculum of a bachelor's degree program in e-marketing includes general education and business foundation courses. You'll get a background in marketing, finance, accounting, economics, business management and business law. Your e-marketing courses could include consumer behavior, search engine marketing, social media marketing, interactive marketing, business applications, web analytics and cyber law. You may also complete an internship or other type of practical training. https://wp.lob.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/email-marketing-3.jpg

I would wager that most business owners under the age of 35 probably have never even considered running a direct mail marketing campaign for their business. Having grown up in an increasingly paperless world, the mere concept of spending precious marketing dollars on printing up thousands of pieces of paper to stuff into mailboxes across a large swath of people seems pretty crazy to the younger generation of entrepreneurs – and it’s not a baseless feeling. There’s no denying that the business world (and our world in general) has been dramatically swinging toward the quicker, more efficient, much cheaper, and much more environmentally friendly realm of electronic communication. But does direct mail marketing actually work?

Hi Elaina – Make sure you’re using content in written form in addition to the images. If you’re putting the words of the email in the image itself, then your message may get lost if subscribers read emails as text only. Images are great to add to emails, but the important information should always be written out. Also, remember to include a call-to-action in every email!